Half held back I still lost a loose molar though
he broke a knuckle on the hard corner
of my cheekbone and snapped back holding
his hand. The rest fell on him and the fight
turned into a dog pile then dispersed.
I wanted to shoot out the tooth all cool like
because at that point, the girls hadn’t yet
left, but Steve said spit up into my hand—
a mixture of blood and saliva the color of glue
with the little thing swimming in it—in case his dad
could fit it back in. Of course, his dad couldn’t so
I kept the white nub for a while like a trophy bruise
and whistled, sometimes, through the open hole,
as if no one else would mess with a boy
who could take a punch and keep his feet,
a boy surrounded by a gang of dogs and Steve
whose dad would clean my teeth for years after
and ask, each time, about my mother. And I
would dream, some nights, of snapping the neck
of a beer bottle on the edge of a bar or
wrapping the sleeve of my shirt around my fist
before burying it in some guy’s stomach. And I
wondered about that fissure of anger, what long crack
it ran up my body until it bloomed through
my fingers, until it took out my loose tooth
because I couldn’t turn away. Because it would take
years before I could leave off looking for
the next someone slightly smaller than me,
the image of Steve holding my tooth like a broken
eggshell kicked from the nest. How gentle he was.